Talk:Bolikhamsai
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Discussion
Why the area is on the map
- Laotian Times (4 and 30 November 2021), Vientiane Times (December 2021) and Báo Hà Tĩnh (8 December 2021): three operations against cannabis plots at Oudomxay village, Viengthong district, on 2 November, 23 November and 3 December 2021.
- Báo Hà Tĩnh (5 January 2022), from the Bolikhamsai provincial police: fields destroyed in Khamkeut (140 hectares) and Xaychamphone (30.05 hectares) districts, and burning still under way in Viengthong.
- Giáo dục Việt Nam (13 April 2012, from Dân Việt): a Hà Tĩnh border-guard officer said that Hmong on the Lao side grew cannabis in the high mountains of the border zone.
- The Real Seed Company's lines Highland Lao and Hmong Ganja, sold as from the highlands of the province, and GRIN-Global accession G 33707.
Growing status
The status is Active: fields were found growing in 2021 and 2022, and the 2012 statement describes a harvest in progress. The fields were destroyed, but no source says that growing in the three districts has ended.
How the border is drawn
- The border is a proxy, drawn on three administrative units: Viengthong District (OpenStreetMap relation 5831793, about 3,970 km²), Khamkeut District (relation 5831703, about 2,640 km²) and Xaychamphone District (relation 6949871, about 2,150 km²). Together they make one piece of about 8,800 km², the figure in the infobox.
- Every dated report of fields since 2000 names one of the three districts, and the 2012 statement concerns the border zone they form. The point shared by the six Real Seed Company accessions (18.58, 104.15, given to two decimal places) lies in Viengthong District.
- The western districts on the Mekong (Paksane, Pakkading, Thaphabath, Borikhane) are left out. The reports read from them are seizures of dried cannabis in transit, not fields. A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime country profile of 2003 named Bolikhamxay among the provinces where commercial cannabis was grown in the lowlands near the Mekong for export to Thailand, without naming districts; it is not cited in the article, which covers the eastern highlands.
- The border is not drawn from accession or news points.
The name
The page takes the bare name of the province, in the spelling of the province page. Bolikhamxay and Borikhamxay are the spellings of the Lao and Vietnamese press.
Where the sources disagree
- Khamkeut figures. Báo Hà Tĩnh gives 140 hectares for Khamkeut district, then lists four groups of plots (Nongkok, Phontan, Phontong and the outskirts of the district town) whose areas add up to about 161 hectares. The article gives the total and the Nongkok figure only.
- National figure. A Xinhua report of 15 January 2024 on the first phase of the Lao national anti-drug agenda says that 4.2 hectares of cannabis were located and cleared between July 2021 and May 2022, far less than the provincial figures for these districts in the same months. The two counts may cover different periods or agencies; the article uses the provincial police figures.
- Who grows the crop. The 2012 border-guard statement says that the growers were mainly Hmong. The Real Seed Company writes that Hmong villages took up ganja only recently and that the crop came to the highlands from lowland Lao growers. The article reports each, attributed.
Sources
Every source cited was read in full: Laotian Times (4 and 30 November 2021), Vientiane Times (December 2021, "Latest Update December 8, 2021"; no earlier date is shown on the page), Báo Hà Tĩnh (8 December 2021 and 5 January 2022, Vietnamese), Giáo dục Việt Nam (13 April 2012, Vietnamese), the Real Seed Company listings and GRIN-Global. Báo Hà Tĩnh also reported the first two Viengthong operations separately (4 November and 1 December 2021), with the same figures. Seizures of dried cannabis at Thaphabath (2022), Pakkading (2012) and Khamkeut (2022) are trade and are not used here.